Page 124 of The Prince's Captive

“PrincepsGavril. Where?”

Prince Nikias’ eye twitched as she spoke in his tongue, and then his gaze darkened as he spoke in hers. “Demon—Prince’s mage. Fight.”

She cast a shield.

It shattered immediately.

All she did was cast shield after shield, and each one only seemed to make Prince Nikias angrier. Eventually she was on the ground, having long since lost count of how many shields she’d put up that had broken when she finally ran out.

Prince Nikias’ whip wrapped around her leg, but instead of dragging her across the ground like Aimilia liked to do, she was suddenly weightless for a moment. Then she was flipping through the air and falling with more force than naturally possible. She landed on her left wrist.

It cracked.

She screamed.

She curled in on herself, clutching her wrist to her chest. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the walls fall. Prince Nikias winced at the sounds she was making with an annoyed glint to his eyes, and he gestured for the guards to come into the ring.

It was broken. It had to be.

But before she could clear her mind and push away the pain long enough to evaluate it, the guards were pulling it away from her chest, and the pain was a fire twice as big ripping through as they jostled it and clapped the limiter back on. She wasn’t sure if she was screaming or sobbing or both as they did so.

The guards hauled her back up and she was dumped back into her cell, left to just lie on her side, unable to do anything about the limiter on her wrist that aggravated the pain pulsing through her injured arm all night.

She didn’t sleep.

Some combination of the pain in her wrist and the ache in her chest continued as every day went by that Gavril didn’t appear in the courtyard or in front of her cell. She tried to distract herself by thinking over her memories of Gavril, trying to figure out when she’d stopped hating him, but she could not focus long enough on it. All she did was just hold onto the sound of his voice that had prayed over her. Had prayed for her.

Why? Why did he always treat her like she was worth the time he wasted on her?

She was barely even aware when they came back for her the next day.

Chapter39

MARCELLA

The next thing Marcella knew, guards were hauling her by her arms, and the pain she hadn’t realized had diminished came roaring right back. Everything was a haze and the only noise she could make were slight whimpers at every new spike rattling up her arm until the guards finally let go and she hit the perfectly polished marble floor.

She recognized this floor. They’d cracked her head on it before.

The throne room.

Marcella hadn’t seen the king or queen since that day, blessedly. But now when she looked up, she saw them sitting on their thrones across the room, staring down at her like she was muck on their sandals.

Also gathered in the throne room were enough Inimicus that Marcella knew she should be worried. Especially with the vast majority of them wearing cloaks nearly identical to the one she had wrapped around her shoulders. Commanders.

Aimilia stood next to the older red-haired commander that had been on the mission to capture her with Gavril. Were they related in some way? Aimilia had her arms crossed and a furrow to her brow none of the other commanders had. And she was the only one who wasn’t looking at Marcella on the floor. She was looking past her.

At her guards?

Marcella heard a pair of footsteps behind her and then she heard a familiar voice speaking in the Inimicus language, “—continue Gavril’s work—issue yesterday—”

Prince Nikias.

Marcella was fighting the urge to hurl again, so she stopped paying attention enough to translate. She couldn’t manage it. All of the little energy she had was focused on that and not crying at the ache ripping through her.

If this wasn’t about Gavril being back, she didn’t care.

Nikias went on and on. The king spoke at some point and Nikias replied.

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